Women Reporting Street Harassment as a Crime in the UK

Being cat-called can feel really frustrating for a lot of reasons. Of course, no one should be subject to sexual harassment while walking down the street or getting on public transportation (or in any situation), but it's also frustrating because so often we feel we don't have any recourse when cat-calling happens. Whether it's a feeling of fear of what might happen if we respond (or don't respond) to a cat-called, or a general malaise at being harassed, being cat-called can make you freeze up. But in one county in England, women who are cat-called can take action aside from clapping back on the streets.

According to Broadly, Nottinghamshire Police outlawed misogyny in 2016, and now women can use that to talk action against street harassers.

The BBC reports Nottinghamshire Police made misogynistic hate crimes against the law, defining them as "incidents against women that are motivated by an attitude of a man towards a woman and includes behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman." Under that statute, Broadly reports at least one woman named Rosemary took a case of street harassment to police, for which she was given special support and handed back her agency. Being able to go through official channels after experiencing this kind of discrimination, Rosemary told Broadly she felt "able to do something" about it for the first time.

This is important. According to research from the ILR School at Cornell University, 85% of women experience street harassment before age 17. But a survey from Stop Street Harassment shows that most often people who are catcalled don't respond to their harassers for fear a response may escalate the situation. Instead, women reported changing their behavior — like wearing headphones or dressing differently — to avoid harassment. This means that women often feel so fearful of harassers that they change something about themselves to stop it, instead of feeling empowered to live their lives as they'r like to. That's where outlawing misogyny and providing official pathways for women to fight back against their harassers may be helpful.

However, outlawing misogyny ignores the large amount of LGBTQ people and people of color who also report being street harassed. According to the Stop Street Harassment survey, people in those groups report being street harassed more often. While outlawing misogyny gives women a course of action to report harassment that may not specifically qualify as a hate crime, these other groups may lack that outlet.